Peninsula SAT prep at it’s finest! Like the ACT better? Peninsula ACT Prep has never been better.

Welcome back to school We are so pumped that Peninsula AVID is back up and running in full swing. Study Hut has been collaborating with the AVID program and delivering tutorials to the AVID students for many years now. AVID takes place every Thursday from 10am-12noon with six tutors from our Redondo Beach Location that are hand picked to attend the AVID and test prep training and help students improve upon their test prep skills. We have all four grade levels that participate and each grade level has two class periods for AVID since Peninsula has a block schedule.

During the AVID classes, each student comes prepared with their tutorial form filled out with their question or information that they want to review or understand better. Each student has a chance to get up and present their question to their small groups and then the tutor will help answer any questions needed while the other students take notes and participate in the discussion. Each student gets about 5-6 minutes for their individual question which makes the hour go by quickly once each student has presented.

We are able to track students progress and the students get points for their achievements, being engaging and participating in the group lessons. Another awesome collaboration we have going on with Peninsula is that a Study Hut manager along side a teacher lead Peninsula SAT prep as well as Peninsula ACT prep.

There are about 25 students that are taught by one manager and one teacher that receive instruction and receive homework assignments to complete and to help track their growth. The sophomores receive test Peninsula SAT prep once per month and the juniors receive Peninsula ACT prep help once per week. We use an online system that we use in office that helps track progress and makes for a smooth class and easy way to generate the information needed. The manager will help with the Math portion of the test prep and the teacher will help with the English portion of the test prep. We are very excited for the school year and to see many familiar faces around campus!

Practice SAT and ACT Exams

Study Hut Tutoring offers free practice SAT and ACT exams. It is important to know that tackling the SAT or ACT can be a daunting challenge for many students. Performing to the best of one’s availability is vital in order to strive for acceptance to increasingly competitive colleges and universities. Students are often unaware of how to effectively prepare for the SAT or ACT. Rest assured, Study Hut Tutoring in El Segundo is here to offer guidance and support through tailored test prep tutoring and free SAT and ACT practice tests.

In order to provide our students with specialized, tailored test ACT and SAT tutoring sessions, we encourage our students to complete a full length, free SAT or ACT practice test. We then critically analyze the results and prepare a tutoring plan tailored to our students, emphasizing focus on areas of potential improvement. As we move through scheduled tutoring sessions, students will return to take additional free SAT or ACT practice tests, which allows us to check our progress in real time and shift focus when the need is indicated by performance.

In addition to reviewing specific concepts and learning new strategies and test taking techniques, exercising to build test taking endurance is crucial. The SAT and ACT are each about four hours long. No matter how you cut it, four hours is a long time to maintain focus, flex cognitive abilities, and perform at a consistently high level. By completing free SAT or ACT practice tests, Study Hut students develop their ability to persevere through mental fatigue. Without a simulated experience made possible by full length practice tests, improving endurance is difficult, and Study Hut is pleased to offer this service to our students.

The fall SAT and ACT are approaching quickly, and here at Study Hut we are eager to see the performance of our prepared students and to observe them flourish. Having completed a personalized test prep plan, in conjunction with effective independent study and the completion of multiple SAT or ACT practice tests, our students will be confident and prepared to rise to the challenge on test day and endure through fatigue and difficulty.

Study Hut Tutoring offers free SAT ACT practice tests. The South Bay is filled with a variety of companies that offer training for the SAT, ACT, ISEE, HSPT, SSAT, GRE, LSAT, and every other kind of test you can imagine. Some offer just group classes, others do one-on-one. Some will come to your house, while many will hold lessons in their office. Curriculums change, strategies differ, and all of them have their pros and cons. However, one thing cannot be ignored no matter what kind of training you seek: Make sure you are given plenty of full length practice tests!

Whether you are training for a test or preparing for a marathon, you cannot adequately improve unless you first know where you are starting. For test training, it is imperative that you take an actual certified test (whichever one you are preparing for) so you get a good sense of what the test is, and we get an accurate reading of where you are starting. At Study Hut, we call this a Diagnostic Test. Armed with this report of your greatest strengths and most glaring weaknesses, we can create a tailored curriculum and study plan that fits YOU! This will mean a much more efficient use of both our times, and maximize our results.

Throughout your training, it is paramount to take officially sanctioned, full length practice tests every few weeks. Not only will this help us track your progress toward your ultimate score goal, but it gives you a safe arena to practice the concepts and strategies that we have been teaching you. It’s like sparing for a boxer, or a fully-padded practice for a football player! We can then analyze your performance, question by question, to see where your breakdowns were. This “game tape” will then be used to show you the benefits of what we are doing, and show you the dangers of falling back into old habits.

Long-story-longer, any training regimen, be it academic or athletic, needs to be anchored with an initial Diagnostic Test, and a healthy amount of Practice Tests. They are the only way to ensure broad and efficient training, and a high quality result. Study Hut offers free diagnostic and practice tests for every standardized test you can imagine. To sign up for one, just fill out a contact form on the right, and a manager will call you shortly.
Happy Training!

Spring is around the corner and that means many high school students will be taking college admissions exams. Understandably, this can be a stressful time for these Hermosa Beach ACT & SAT Students, and as many of you may have heard, the SAT will be changing formats in March. The new SAT will now feature four sections: Reading, Writing, Math with calculator, and Math without calculator. Additionally, to the relief of many, there will no longer be a penalty for incorrect guesses. This means that, similar to the ACT, you should make sure to not to leave any questions blank. In fact, the new SAT looks very similar to the ACT in its structure with the important note that the SAT does not contain a science section, but instead contains two math sections.

For many Hermosa Beach ACT & SAT students, these changes are a great relief, while for others they are simply stress and pressure in another format. Either way, do not fear because Study Hut is here to help. At Study Hut Tutoring we provide close-knit 1-on-1 tutoring to help students prepare for the SAT and ACT exams. The 1-on-1 tutoring here at Study Hut emphasizes close monitoring of the student’s progress and tailor-designed sessions for each student based on their strengths and weaknesses. Our shared objective is to maximize the student’s improvement and overall score. Additionally, we accentuate the importance of taking practice tests, and as such we have free practice SAT and ACT tests every other Saturday morning. Moreover, we offer a free consultation to discuss the student’s individual strengths, weaknesses, and overall score. As Hermosa Beach ACT & SAT students, if you would like to sign up for a practice test, feel free to contact Study Hut at 310-379-1400, or send us an email at josh@studyhut.com.

It is never too early to begin preparing. Do not delay, contact Study Hut today!

Ok the weather is pretty nice…blue skies for days…Ahhhh. Winter Break! A time to relax, eat, hang out with family, and celebrate. You should definitely do all of those things… (here comes a but)…(drumroll please)…

BUT

You should ALSO use your break wisely! Open that backpack and do some studying over Winter Break. It’s been a long, hard semester, and you do not want to spoil all that you have put into it by slacking right before finals. With the biggest test of the semester right around the corner, many of you already have a study guide or an idea of what your final will look like. Use that!

You can start making flashcards for vocab. That’s something you can do with Mariah Carey belting out “All I Want for Christmas…is an A!” and it’s been proven that listening to music while studying can improve your performance on the test!

You should make a detailed outline with flow charts, timelines and pretty colors. This will refresh your memory of the topics and provide a beautiful study guide you can use once finals week arrives.

Grab your old tests or practice tests, and retake them, checking your answers as you go. This will help you decide where you need to allocate the most time for studying, and where you can skim a bit because you already have a good handle on the material.

DO NOT simply run your eyes over every single chapter in the book, or every single page of notes you’ve written. This is a waste of your time. Rereading is a passive activity, plus it is much too general. With so much material to cover, you are better off zeroing in on what’s important (hint: what’s on the study guide or what was on old tests).Have fun over break, but spending the entire two weeks binge-watching Parks and Rec for the 3rd time will come back to haunt you when finals week arrives! Put in a few hours over break and I promise you’ll thank yourself later!

With the opening of Hut Educational Consulting across from Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, our team of tutors and counselors here at Study Hut has expanded its range of services to include some of the tougher post-graduate admissions tests, including but not limited to the LSAT. While some of our team members have been doing LSAT tutoring for several years, others are brand new to it and have had to commit to a full-scale refresher in order to get caught up to speed with recent changes to the test, as well as the specific tutoring strategies that are critical for students in each of the sections on the LSAT. When tutoring a student for the LSAT, it is absolutely critical for LSAT tutors to understand their specific students’ strengths and weaknesses. A specific strategy or time-management approach that may work for a student who has just begun his or her training may not be effective for a high-performing, well-prepared LSAT student looking to bump up his or her score by just a few points.

Although students often report that the dreaded Games sections is the most difficult section and accordingly think that the majority of training time should be allocated toward practicing those exercises, that is not always the case for every student. Oftentimes, students think that they need the more LSAT tutoring in the Games section, but they actually just need to get a few basic concepts clarified. Many students are able to bump up their scores quite significantly in the Reading Comprehension and Logical Reasoning sections through hard work, consistent practice, and some support on tough questions from an LSAT tutor. At Study Hut Tutoring and Hut Educational Consulting, we are her to help answer those tough questions and give our students an edge with LSAT tutoring that will yield real results.

Summer is halfway through, has your brain turned to mush? Are you forgetting how to
do basic math? This is normal when you aren’t using your brain like you do during the
school year. Just like any other muscle, your brain needs regular exercise to stay fit!

While taking a rest once in a while to recharge is important, it’s also important to
keep your mental fitness during the summer so you are ready to tackle school come
September. A great way to do this is to work on subjects you struggled with in the
previous year to stay caught up, or start learning material in advance so you don’t feel like
you’ve been thrown in the deep end of the pool once school starts up again.

While things are quieter at the Study Hut during the summer, we still have great tutors
here ready to help out with any and all subjects you may need help with this summer.
Math tripping you up? Spanish giving you dolor de cabeza? Chemistry confusing you?
Think of the Study Hut as summer camp for your brain!

Study Hut offers Spanish and French tutoring and, of course, English; Chinese was, up until recently, a rough subject for tutors and students alike, ranking itself as, in all righteousness, one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn and acquire.
I am, although Chinese in nature, unfortunately, not a native Chinese speaker; ergo, I was initially uncomfortable — hesitant — with tutoring such a complex language. With this gracelessness notwithstanding, I sat down with Middle School enthusiast, Rees, and began what I would categorize as an extremely productive session where we went through the fundamentals of common Chinese dialogue. Writing Chinese characters was, surprisingly, a “cinche”, and Rees and I sped through a decent amount of material in a relatively short amount of time. Whereas I distinctly remember Chinese being rather abstract and difficult to comprehend, I was pleasantly taken aback by the current academic approach to Chinese as a foreign language, a consequence of crossing the cultural divide — integration at its best — globalizing and simplifying a language crucial to the growing world economy.
Chinese still lacks the omnipresence and fluency of English, ergo, making America the dominating country in the world, but this ancient language is steadily growing into a universal medium for commercial communication. Therefore, it is with great joy that Study Hut now offers Chinese as one of our subjects. We are extremely excited to support our students with this new systemic development!

I recently received an email that gives a good perspective on teachers and their stance on district fund allocation. This thread is admittedly slanted, and only reflects one person’s point of view. Nonetheless, I find it thought-provoking. Please feel free to email info@studyhut.com if you would like to propose a rebuttal. I will post the best response:

Today we spoke about students needing to keep track of their own grades in the last 7-9 weeks of school here since teachers are not posting now as a way to get attention to the 180 days of school issue and to try to convince the school board that teachers who haven’t gotten a raise in some years deserve one. You may know that when money was ultra tight, we teachers agreed to cut our own (and more importantly the students’) work schedule as a way to furlough our salaries and keep the district solvent. [And we know you all chipped in more than your share as well to PEF and I do the same for my kids in MBUSD]. Anyway, it’s an allocation of district revenue issue that everyone should be weighing in on, and teachers are financially stressed and as inflation raises everyone’s cost of living, it is getting more and more difficult to live on a reduced work schedule. Not to mention, should we as a society, be reducing our educational calendar as the rest of the globe certainly is not decreasing theirs? If you disagree with me, I certainly would respect your differing viewpoint, and welcome you to share it with me. But, for better or worse right now, we need to be extra vigilante of our own school performance and stay on top of our homework and prepare for exams. There are only 7 weeks to Memorial Day (including this week) and then final exams are the week after a severely truncated Memorial week (with Monday off and 2 senior project minimum days for students).

I hope everyone had a relaxing break and come in fresh for a 2 week push before finals (in the 3rd week back). I look forward to continuing to work with you to meet your academic goals/potential. This is a critical stretch we enter here in 2012. By this time next year you will be knee (or thigh or waist) deep in junior year, on the cusp of taking your SAT and ACT and a semester away from college applications (started in AVID class in spring of junior year). Your preparation now will prepare you for these not too distant academic challenges.

I encourage you as we enter the 2nd semester and then into the summer to create a plan for SAT/ACT study. I think weekend mornings are particularly good right now (30-60 minutes on each weekend day would be outstanding). Then, in the summer, you should ramp up your time commitment to SAT/ACT prep and some of you may even consider doing a prep class. We will commit to SAT prep on a weekly basis next year but an hour or two in AVID class should be a great supplement to additional spent at home (or even with an outside SAT prep class or tutor).

And while I am on the subject of the summer, plan to visit some universities this summer as part of a already planned summer vacation or as a college visit specific trip. There is no need to go crazy on this front but it’s really great to have a few visits under your belt so that by fall of senior year you have a nice idea of your likes and dislikes, and perhaps you’ll even see some schools that you’re excited to apply to!

Again, happy new year! This is a very exciting time of your life. I also know it can be stressful and so I am here to help you work through problems and I hope AVID helps to (sometimes) alleviate some of the stress that comes with being a high school student. Naturally, the biggest thing you can do to alleviate stress is to continue to plug away at the homework and be as proactive as possible with your studies. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of any assistance to you.